Update on my Infinity Throat Plate Issue

In a previous post, I talked about an issue with my Infinity Throat Plate and my SawStop PCS. Please read that post first, if you haven’t already, so I don’t have to rehash everything.

Cross-Cut Sleds are NOT the problem

I edited the previous post to say that I’ve discovered I was wrong. The problem happens even if I don’t use a cross-cut sled. I have to raise the blade higher before it happens, but it does indeed happen with a cross-cut sled. So we can take cross-cut sleds off the list as potential causes.

Talking with SawStop

I spent an extremely enjoyable hour or so on the phone with Trent Davis at SawStop. I reached out to Trent on the SawStop User’s Group on Facebook, and he called me yesterday morning.

I want to make one thing extremely clear: Trent is an awesome guy, and I really enjoyed talking with him. Trent is very much like I am, when it comes to problems like this. I’m a retired software engineer, and Trent has a software background, among other things.

Both Trent and I hate the idea of not having a solution, because we know that if you see a problem, you may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. If you just let it go, it might manifest itself in the future in a way you can’t possibly envision.

So we talked through a bunch of possible scenarios, one geek to another. (Sorry, Trent, if that term offends you, but to me, it’s a term of endearment.) Trent was very careful not to let a possibility, even a remote one, go by without examining it.

And we both talked about the dangers of making assumptions. It’s really easy to spend an entire day chasing down a possible cause, only to discover that the initial assumption was wrong.

Anyway, we couldn’t find a cause, which was not fun for either of us. But…

Infinity Throat Plate conductivity

Even though I couldn’t find anywhere where the blade or supporting apparatus would come in contact with the throat plate, Trent walked me through using a multimeter (which I have but didn’t know how to use) to see if the Infinity throat plate is conductive.

Anywhere there’s paint, it’s not conductive. There are two places I could find that weren’t painted (and they would never come in contact with anything other than the rubber posts at the back of the throat), so I was able to use them to determine that the plate itself is conductive, which shouldn’t be a surprise.

Lacquer Thinner

Which leads me to one very remote possibility. A short time ago I cleaned my cast iron top with WD-40. After wiping off the WD-40, it leaves a residue, so I used a small amount of lacquer thinner to remove the rest. I had left the throat plate in, not really thinking much about it.

After I wiped a cloth over the plate, I noticed some red paint came off the throat plate because of the lacquer thinner. Not much, but a little bit.

So I suppose, somehow, that could possibly have something to do with it, although I can’t really imagine how.

Testing a Different Brake

I’m going to try testing it with a different brake. Trent sent me an RMA so I could send the two triggered brakes I have to SawStop, and once they detrmine that the brakes were triggered by the blade touching flesh (they were) they’ll send me two new ones.

By the way, the fact I have two triggered brakes has nothing to do with the throat plate, and everything to do with the fact that nobody has yet invented a StupidStop™️.

Anyway, when I get around to sending them, and SawStop sends me the new ones, I’ll test with those to see if they make any difference.

In the meantime…

In the meantime, I’ll try to contact Infinity and see if they have any suggestions. But I’ll stop using the Infinity throat plate for now. I’ve been thinking about making my own anyway, so maybe I’ll do that.

That’s all for now. Sorry if this post wasn’t the clearest post I’ve ever written, but I’ve got a video to finish.

Later.